


Worthy of Altars

by victorianvirgil



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Assassin - Freeform, Graphic depictions of violence - Freeform, Guns, Knives, M/M, Mentions of Blood, Mentions of Death, Mentions of the Black Market, Patton is a doctor, Swearing, Wounds, angst to comfort kind of, logan is an fbi agent, mentions of human trafficking ring, patton swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 20:00:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21904351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/victorianvirgil/pseuds/victorianvirgil
Summary: Virgil’s job was simple: kill the Night Prowler. He had certainly done more for a lot less so that wasn’t the problem, and there shouldn’t have been one at all, even.But nothing was ever guaranteed, not for an assassin, even for one as good as him.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders/Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders
Comments: 8
Kudos: 55
Collections: Sanders Sides Secret Santa 2019





	Worthy of Altars

Despite the flashing and half-blinding lights of New York City, the world was dark through the scarlet lens Virgil peered through. Four opaque lines shot out from a circle in the middle with a singular dot dead center as a marker. Two-hundred and fifty feet away was Virgil’s mark, dancing in the red glow with his arms around a petite brunette.

Remus Besson, alias the Dark Prowler, was worth eight million alive, ten dead. Vigil kept still, following Remus and his partner’s movements as they swayed together, catching the eyes of many finely-dressed guests swirling champagne in their flutes and smirking at one another as if knowing something the others did not—all believing themselves gods with the dirt they had on one another worth more than gold.

Made them worthy of altars to be worshipped on.

But Remus knew more than the lot combined, which was why he had to be taken out. Why Officer Logan Keene had been willing to forego due process in order for a quicker, more effective way to eliminate the most wanted man in America. And Virgil had been more than happy to accept, taking the first half a million up front to ensure that he would be paid in full after the deed was done.

It had been hours since then, the money secure in an overseas bank account under Virgil’s name with the rest of the reward soon to follow.

As soon as the man in Remus’ arms moved out of the way to give Virgil a clear shot, of course.

The wind rustled the hair at the top of Virgil’s head and he shifted the position of his legs to give him a better chance of escape. Stories below, cars honked at one another and people chattered above the traffic, oblivious to the dinner party packed with human traffickers, the top sellers and buyers of the black market, and in the center of it all, a handsome man that knew too much to be left alive.

A flight of pigeons passed overhead and Remus began to spin his dance partner out of his arms, the pair perfectly placed in front of the open window. Across the street, Virgil didn’t hesitate, releasing a quick breath before pulling the trigger.

An ear splitting scream cracked in the cold, winter air and without a moment to spare, Virgil flipped onto his back and pointed his gun, firing the silencer. The man behind him pushed the barrel aside, forcing the shot inches wide of his head before maneuvering it out of Virgil’s hands. Tossed it over the sixty-story building without hesitation.

Fortunately for New York’s—and maybe even America’s—most notorious assassin, Virgil didn’t need a gun to win a fight. To kill.

The man grabbed at him but Virgil was smaller and much faster, rolling out of the way. When he popped up, there were two twin daggers pressed into his palms, both angled down to protect his forearms and easy to swing between his fingers.

“I’ll kill you,” the man hissed, words laced with poison and dripping with utter hatred. Virgil couldn’t hear him over the whine of his blades singing through the air, slicing into skin and drawing blood like the moon drew the tides.

He was dead in a minute, Virgil left cleaning the blood from his silver blade and glancing over the tips to the party that had fallen into chaos below. The man meant to kill Virgil had disrupted him just enough that the shot went wide, hitting Besson just above his collarbone. A nick instead of an instant kill.

If the man that had attacked him hadn’t already dead, Virgil would’ve kill him again.

Instead, he gathered his belongings and raced down the stairs, knowing that his next best chance for a kill would be when Remus was on the street and just before he slipped into a car that would take him to a secured secondary location. At the last step before the landing, he pivoted on his heel and turned, throwing the dagger in his left hand at the man that had been following him, steps having been perfectly synced with Virgil’s.

The man in red ducked, lifting his head and meeting Virgil’s eyes.

Both of them stopped in their tracks, hearts hammering.

“Roman?” Virgil breathed, the rest of the world fading to nothing as he stared at his fiance. And sure enough, the golden ring he had used to propose to him only a week before was there on his finger, grinning in the dull stairway light.

“Holy . . . holy shit, Virge,” Roman said, lowering his gun and running down the rest of the steps. “Why didn’t you . . . why are you . . . ?”

“Why are you here?”

“He’s my twin brother.”

“You look nothing alike.”

“Fraternal brother.”

“Oh.”

They were silent for a moment, the world hushed and unmoving outside the bubble that seemed to be created whenever they were together. Then Virgil released a breath, “I have to kill him, Ro, he’s a bad person.”

A sigh, “I know but . . . I’m being paid a lot of money to keep him alive.”

“How much?”

“Twenty-five mil.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. You?”

“Ten.”

“I think I win this.”

Virgil bit the inside of his cheek as Roman approached him, letting the other cup his jaw and brush his thumb over his cheekbone.

“No, I need to finish this job.”

“Then you’ll have to kill me.” His voice was hardly above a whisper, fingernails digging into the smooth skin of Virgil’s cheek. A gasp escaped from him when the knife still in Virgil’s hand was plunged into his stomach, eyes widening as his free hand gripped Virgil’s shoulder for support.

Slowly, the assassin lowered his fiance into a sitting position, letting him lean back against the wall. His expression was blank and his voice was even as he spoke, “Leave the knife in, don’t touch it and keep your hands around it here to stop the bleeding. Don’t move, I’ll be back in three.”

With a kiss to the top of Roman’s head, Virgil tugged Roman’s gun from his hand and raced down the rest of the stairs, doing his best to block out the sound of his future-husband’s screams. But he had to finish the job.

Besides, Roman wasn’t being paid a dime, he knew that.

He was passing the window of the third story when Remus and a group of secretly armed men emerged from the building across the street and Virgil skidded to a stop. With a gun in each hand and at a much closer range, he fired off both simultaneously, the bullets shattering the window and raining down onto the sidewalk below. The bulky man in front of Remus grunted as he was hit, falling to his knees and dying before he even hit the pavement.

It was then that Remus looked up, a terrifying smile so like his brother’s spreading across his lips as Virgil pulled the trigger again, this time meeting his mark. The bullet sang through the air before exploding into Remus’ chest, the contents of his heart splashing against his lungs and his limp body collapsing into the arms of an awaiting guard.

Virgil took a bullet to the thigh and one went straight through his wrist, shattering the glass mirror behind him, but there was no time to wait and lick his own wounds.

His fiance was dying twelve stories above him and because the kill had been so messy, the New York Police were mere minutes from the scene.

Roman was still slumped against the wall, hands covered in his blood and eyes half-lidded. Upon seeing Virgil, he shimmied away, breaking out into hysterical laughter as Virgil gently swung him up into his arms, struggling with only one good hand. “You can’t kill me, you can’t kill me.”

“I don’t want to. Hush, save your strength,” Virgil cooed, wincing when he glanced down at the knife still plunged into Roman’s abdomen. He knew that his fiance wouldn’t be in any real harm—the knife had been perfectly placed, after all—and he had suffered far more severe wounds himself, but seeing Roman so hurt stirred something inside of him.

Regret, maybe, or fear.

Both were foreign emotions to him so he wasn’t entirely sure.

Remus’ henchmen had stormed the building but Virgil, having grown up in the city, knew its streets better than most and easily maneuvered around them, slipping into a back alley and sticking to the shadows. A few minutes passed before he reached a safe place, a room he rented on the ground level for occasions like this. “The office”, he had called it once, with hardwood floors making it easy to clean up blood, and black walls that didn’t need much effort to conceal his work.

The white accents were an added touch for decoration and needed to be frequently painted over.

Virgil rested Roman down on the lone table erected in the middle of the room, mostly used for the occasions when Virgil had to torture a subject for information. Not that his fiance needed to know that as he ran to the door on the opposite side of the room and called up the stairs.

A pair of footsteps came racing down, a tiny figure with platinum hair and icy blue eyes appearing. “What’s the damage?” Patton asked, blue latex gloves and white lab coat already on. Despite how many times it was bleached and washed, Virgil’s blood still splotted the jacket after all the times the other had healed Virgil’s wounds.

“It’s my fiance, doc.”

“Roman . . . so you both know now?” Patton asked, walking into the room while Virgil shut the door behind him, locking it as they both moved to see Roman.

“What do you mean we both know-”

“Patton?” Roman groaned, eyes meeting the doctor’s. “How do you . . . fuck it hurts . . . how do you know each other?”

“Isn’t that your knife, Virgil?”

“I stabbed him.”

Patton gave him an incredulous look but shook his head, adjusting his gloves and grabbing his kit from the closet in the back corner. “I don’t even want to know.”

“Patton . . . Patton I . . . what is that?”

“Morphine, because this is going to hurt like a bitch.”

An agonizing grunt escaped from Roman as Patton eased the knife out of his abdomen, Virgil clutching his fiance’s hand and knowing that the sound of the stifled scream would haunt him for the rest of his life.

“It’s okay . . . baby it’s okay . . .”

“Doesn’t look bad, just need to stitch him up. Excellent placement, Virge. You avoided all of his internal organs. Although why you felt this was necessary . . .”

“But why is he in so much pain?” Virgil asked, looking towards his friend with horror in his eyes. It was like nothing Patton had ever seen before.

He knew Virgil had a heart, but he hadn’t known just how much of it belonged to Roman.

“Because of betrayal, I think,” Patton suggested, letting his needle sink in and out of Roman’s skin as he stitched him back up. “He loves you and you stabbed him. Not in the back, but close enough.”

Before Virgil could respond or even fully comprehend the weight of the doctor’s words, Patton said, “There. I think it’s best if you went somewhere else. Collect your bounty or get something to drink. He needs to heal, I’ll take care of him.”

There was more to it then that but Virgil was devastated enough as it was. So as silent as his title suggested, Virgil slipped from the office, leaving the man he loved alone with his friend and trying to pretend as if his hands weren’t shaking.

-

“That might have been the messiest job of your career,” Officer Logan Keene said, shaking his head when the man he had hired to kill the Dark Prowler slinked into the room. “Was that some sort of middle finger to me for hiring you? I though the ten million was enough for us to have a professional truce?”

“Couldn’t let you go without some paperwork.”

“And you didn’t recover the body, the New York police did.”

“I left it for your dogs to retrieve, it was still my kill,” Virgil shrugged, sliding into the empty chair on the other side of Logan’s desk, kicking his feet up onto it.

Logan’s nose scrunched at the sight of Virgil’s bloodstained boots but said nothing. “The account the money should be transferred to?”

“Not happening, I need the physical bills.”

“We cannot provide that at this time.”

“You have a week.”

“These are not your terms, assassin. The United States government hired you-”

“And I could have said no and Remus would still be alive. You have a week, nine and a half million. In hundred dollar bills, please, no need to waste taxpayer money by shipping it to me in pennies. Oh, and one more thing-”

“This was not in the contract-”

“Tell the president to go fuck himself.”

Logan remained silent as Virgil slipped out the window, eyes flickering to the street where he should have landed. But the assassin was nowhere in sight, as good as the legends said. He sighed, running his fingers through his hair and glancing towards the Macbook on his desk, fingers sliding to the keys so he could finish the night’s paperwork while Virgil ran along the rooftops, scaling down the office’s building and slipping into Patton’s living room window to find Roman resting on the couch, a cold plate filled with food in his lap and his eyes on the blank wall across from him.

He turned, sensing Virgil’s presence and his lips were drawn tight.

Virgil shut the window behind him, running his fingers through his hair as he took a step towards Roman. “Baby, I-”

“You fucking stabbed me.”

“Roman-”

“I should kill you right now, there’s nothing stopping me.”

“I’ll give you back your gun to do it, if that’s what you really want.”

Roman’s eyes softened just a bit and Virgil took another step closer, shedding all of his weapons from his guns to the tiny dagger lodged into his boot, leaving them on the empty living room chair before sliding onto the seat at the edge of the couch. He was more vulnerable than he had been in since he picked up his first knife at eight and Roman seemed to recognize this.

Virgil’s hand brushed over Roman’s ankle hidden beneath the thick blanket Patton had lent him, looking up into his fiance’s eyes.

“I can’t . . . I don’t know what to think.”

“Then don’t, let me . . . let me take care of you.”

“I don’t know how much I trust you to do that when you could just stab me again for a few million dollars. Is that all I’m worth?”

“Don’t read too much into it-”

“You  _ stabbed  _ me, Virgil!”

“Christ, and I’ll never hear the end of it.”

After a moment of glaring at one another, they burst out into smiles, unable to contain their laughter. With a shaking hand, Roman reached out and Virgil clasped it, lifting it to his lips and kissing his knuckles.

“I’m sorry, if it’s any consolation.”

“Sure, and I guess you avoided all my organs and arteries.”

“So really, you should be thanking me.”

“Don’t push it, I still might take you up on that offer of stabbing you.”

“Which you know how to do because you’re also an assassin? And your brother was the most wanted man in America?”

“Was?”

“I killed him, yes. But you’re an assassin?”

Roman closed his eyes, pulling the blanket higher up his body, “Yeah, family practice. You?”

“My foster parents got me into it.”

Nodding with his eyes still closed, Roman inched further down the couch. Within minutes, he was asleep.

And Virgil, still consumed by guilt, let himself fall into the chair where he had left his weapons, eyes remain on Roman’s sleeping form. Staying there through the night and through the morning, watching over him. Patton brought in breakfast for them but Virgil didn’t touch it, never letting his gaze flicker away from his fiance, from the man he stabbed.

The man he loved.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope this counts as the hurt/comfort you wanted. merry christmas <3


End file.
